Is my fear ridiculous? MDApplicants...

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Hypothalamus

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I have an MDApplicants profile, but I haven't updated it with my GPA, MCAT scores, and activities because I'm afraid that medical schools will use it to determine which schools I have applied to and been accepted into.

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Hypothalamus said:
I have an MDApplicants profile, but I haven't updated it with my GPA, MCAT scores, and activities because I'm afraid that medical schools will use it to determine which schools I have applied to and been accepted into.

there's no names on mdapps....there's no way they would find you and confirm it
 
I'm not sure about that. I haven't made an MDApps profile for the same reason...I went to a small undergrad institution, and it would be really easy for them to figure out that way. I don't think you can make a MDApps profile without entering your university
 
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rajad10 said:
there's no names on mdapps....there's no way they would find you and confirm it

Well, there is likely only one applicant from ____________ University / College with MCAT scores of ____ VR, ____ BS, ____ PS, ____ WS, and activities ABC, DEF, and GHI.
 
I think that's a pretty reasonable fear, it would be very easy for a school to look you up and the info about where you applied is kept confidential until March or something. But I don't think having one would be a problem anyway. Just don't write negative things about the schools, because I have heard from an adcomm member that they have rejected people they were planning to accept for doing stuff like that. And yes, that means that there is an adcomm member out there using mdapps and being able to identify people.
 
yeah, i guess that would suck if they were snooping around...when all you wanted was to share info with fellow applicants. hmm...maybe you can keep the extracurriculars vague? i think most people are just looking at this to get an idea of the mcat and gpa people are getting in with.
 
for me it wouldn't matter, coming from a school small school i'd be pretty easy to pick out
 
What about facebook?

I have heard some employers have actually fires/not-hired people because they found disagreeable facebook profiles. Maybe it wouldn't be far-fetched to say adcoms could do the same.
 
baylormed said:
What about facebook?

I have heard some employers have actually fires/not-hired people because they found disagreeable facebook profiles. Maybe it wouldn't be far-fetched to say adcoms could do the same.

you can't forget myspace either!
 
Hypothalamus said:
Well, there is likely only one applicant from ____________ University / College with MCAT scores of ____ VR, ____ BS, ____ PS, ____ WS, and activities ABC, DEF, and GHI.

exactly. it's not safe. I'll wait until it's all over to share.
 
yeah, i've been careful to remove innocent pictures from facebook that might not look that innocent...
 
baylormed said:
What about facebook?

I have heard some employers have actually fires/not-hired people because they found disagreeable facebook profiles. Maybe it wouldn't be far-fetched to say adcoms could do the same.

I've thought about this too. Decided to make my profile only viewable to my friends. Med schoosl can't hack facebook..... I hope
 
it's normally just viewable to friends and people from your school, right?
 
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just a side note here: all the athletic teams at my college got in trouble for inappropriate things on facebook, so now everyone, including myself, is randomly checked by the athletics staff....oops. good rule of thumb for me: never put anything on the internet that i wouldn't want my grandma to see :)
 
You guys have freaked me out a little. So I anon-o-mized my profile and have removed the link from my signature. You want to see my MD Apps? PM Me.
 
It's pretty easy to figure out who someone is by his/her mdapp profile once the person puts down school attended, major, and the precise breakdown of the MCAT score. Things like GPA, extra-curicculars, and home states are just icing on the cake. Bottom line: if you don't want med schools and fellow undergraduates to know who you are before, during, and after the application season, it might be wise to reconsider posting a profile. But hey...it's up to you.
 
Doesn't you AMCAS say where you applied? There is no way to positively ID someone on MDapps., therefore they cannot use that information. So what about Facebook or Myspace. You should not put anything on there if you are ashamed of it.

I think that this is silly.
 
Just make sure to not be a ******* about it and write something bad about the schools you're applying to. Or don't put up a profile if you're genuinely worried about it.

But there are very few, if any, schools, that are going to say "oh well...he got accepted to school X...we missed our shot"

Unless School X is Harvard. In which case you probably don't care that this other school isn't going to accept you.
 
The AMCAS does say where you applied, but last year the consensus on SDN was that other schools do not see where you applied until late in the application season, ie after most acceptances have been handed out. This has been debated before, though, and regardless it does not let schools know whether or not you were interviewed or rejected from the schools on your list.

Edit: I'd also like to add that this is probably not something worth getting freaked out about. Last year some of the most successful applicants on this site had regularly updated mdapps, and their numbers/ec's definitely made them easy to find. Just don't be dumb and blab too much in your profile.
 
I disabled the link to mine for that very reason. When I searched and saw only 2 other entries from my UG school on there, and I was the only one applying this year, I decided not to risk it -- while it was probably unlikely that my SDN postings would 1) Be found and 2) Contain anything that would hurt my application, I decided that there was really nothing to gain by leaving the link there.

I actually never thought of it in terms of other schools seeing where you had applied/been accepted to, so I think I will actually remove my MDapps profile entirely for that very reason.
 
This is not the first year that MDApplicants site has been around. If you go back several years on the MDapps website, people are still gettting accepted even though they have everything listed. I highly doubt that having a MDapp profile is going to have any impact on your acceptance into med school, otherwise it would have affected everyone else in the past years with profiles. With my background it will be easy to pick me out, but I am not so paranoid as to sever all identifying features.
 
I'm having a tough time picturing Adcoms with nothing better to do than search through myface and mdapps trying to find you, yes, you on the off chance that you have an mdapps profile in the hopes that they will be able to get a picture of what other schools you're applying to.

Maybe one of the Adcoms can refute this, but I think that maybe ego is marrying paranoia here...
 
You should be worried about the adcoms hopping on SDN (which they do) and going from *here* to your MDapp profile, and coming back to treat your history of posts as an impromptu sketch of your personality.
 
Rafa said:
You should be worried about the adcoms hopping on SDN (which they do) and going from *here* to your MDapp profile, and coming back to treat your history of posts as an impromptu sketch of your personality.

Point Taken: Sig gone. MdApps profile--> gone..soon
 
Rafa said:
You should be worried about the adcoms hopping on SDN (which they do) and going from *here* to your MDapp profile, and coming back to treat your history of posts as an impromptu sketch of your personality.
???? They have a history of Rafa's posts. But how do they know who Rafa is? I can find all sorts of stuff about you from mdapps and your history. But if I'm looking at a candidates application, unless I have their SDN handle, it doesn't matter.

Or an Adcom can, in this their busiest time of year, look at an app and go to mdapps on the longshot that an applicant has a listing and search for an alma mater (assuming it's easy to spell: is it UC Santa Barbara, U.C. Santa Barbara, UCSB, etc. All different results). From that list, they can try to match MCAT scores. If they're successful, eureka! They have a list of what schools you've applied to. But mdapps is such a miniscule percentage of med school applicants and since they have so many apps, I really don't see them going to the trouble.
 
You guys just made me disable the links to my blog and my mdapps profile.

I won't be getting rid of either, though. It just means people/adcoms on SDN won't be able to see them and know they're mine.
 
Do you think adcoms really have time to snoop around on the internet to confirm people's mdapplicant's when they have 10,000 applications to review? :rolleyes:
 
notdeadyet said:
???? They have a history of Rafa's posts. But how do they know who Rafa is? I can find all sorts of stuff about you from mdapps and your history. But if I'm looking at a candidates application, unless I have their SDN handle, it doesn't matter.

Or an Adcom can, in this their busiest time of year, look at an app and go to mdapps on the longshot that an applicant has a listing and search for an alma mater (assuming it's easy to spell: is it UC Santa Barbara, U.C. Santa Barbara, UCSB, etc. All different results). From that list, they can try to match MCAT scores. If they're successful, eureka! They have a list of what schools you've applied to. But mdapps is such a miniscule percentage of med school applicants and since they have so many apps, I really don't see them going to the trouble.

On the off chance that they do take the trouble.....much like you spend an hour optimizing that one line of your personal statement...not a chance one is willing to take.
 
Although I have to admit, I took down phrases like "first choice" and "reach" just to be on the safe side :laugh:
 
Rafa said:
You should be worried about the adcoms hopping on SDN (which they do) and going from *here* to your MDapp profile, and coming back to treat your history of posts as an impromptu sketch of your personality.


which takes us back to the fact that you shouldn't post things that are rude, arrogant, disrespectful etc. you shouldn't post things like that anywhere online: SDN, MDAPPS, MYSPACE, FACEBOOK........
 
baylormed said:
You guys just made me disable the links to my blog and my mdapps profile.

I won't be getting rid of either, though. It just means people/adcoms on SDN won't be able to see them and know they're mine.

Unfortunately your previous sigs can be seen, including the link.
 
Adcoms should waive secondaries if they want to use SDN posts to analyze our personalities. I'm sure though that they'd prefer skimming mdapps as opposed to plowing through our AMCAS applications.

I hope this paranoia doesn't last. Without the signature taglines and links to our sister site, SDN is going to be a lot less fun.
 
durfen said:
Unfortunately your previous sigs can be seen, including the link.

How?
 
baylormed said:

hm. ain't working. maybe they can't. still. the off chance.
 
ironmanf14 said:
Do you think adcoms really have time to snoop around on the internet to confirm people's mdapplicant's when they have 10,000 applications to review? :rolleyes:

Why do you think the whole process takes so long?? :smuggrin:
 
CptCrunch said:
Google's cache, perhaps?

and we know he's applying to baylor. :smuggrin:
 
CptCrunch said:
Google's cache, perhaps?

I don't think so. When you change your signature, it changes in every post you make. Just like when you change your avatar, it changes in your old posts as well.
 
Sorry, duplicate post. See below.
 
durfen said:
and we know he's applying to baylor. :smuggrin:

I'm a she, and yes, I'm applying to Baylor, but that's not they "why" of my name. Think about it. ;)
 
baylormed said:
I'm a she, and yes, I'm applying to Baylor, but that's not they "why" of my name. Think about it. ;)

Warning: the answer is still in your SDN public profile.

PS Congrats on reaching 500 posts.
 
Look, get a grip on yourselves! As a former student member of an adcom, I can tell you that it is EXTREMELY unlikely that anyone is looking through MDapps to find you - unless...

We all used to "ego-google" the school. To see what, in general terms, is being said "out there". If one of the more 'net savvy members (like a student member) noted a unflattering post about the school authored by someone who linked to their MDapp profile, we might try and figure out who the poster was. As for facebook, myspace, etc. we didn't have the time, nor did we care (unless, again, your facebook site came up with some "anti x medical college" quote we found randomly).

Bottom line, don't bash any schools and feel free to post away...

:cool:
 
Just slightly alter parts of your application. If your GPA is 3.63, put down 3.62. If you scored a 12,13,11,Q on the MCAT, put down 12,12,12, P. If you're East-Asian, put down South-Asian. Whenever you're application cycle is complete, just change it back to the real numbers/info. I don't think the people who run the site would like my suggestions.
 
Dr Durden said:
Warning: the answer is still in your SDN public profile.

PS Congrats on reaching 500 posts.

Oh so true! :laugh: I just took care of that.
Thank you!

I reached 500+!!!! YOHOOOOO!!!!!
 
baylormed said:
I don't think so. When you change your signature, it changes in every post you make. Just like when you change your avatar, it changes in your old posts as well.

Google "baylormed" and there's a direct link to your profile in addition to your old sig on a cached SDN page.
 
notdeadyet said:
???? They have a history of Rafa's posts. But how do they know who Rafa is? I can find all sorts of stuff about you from mdapps and your history. But if I'm looking at a candidates application, unless I have their SDN handle, it doesn't matter.

Or an Adcom can, in this their busiest time of year, look at an app and go to mdapps on the longshot that an applicant has a listing and search for
an alma mater (assuming it's easy to spell: is it UC Santa Barbara, U.C. Santa Barbara, UCSB, etc. All different results). From that list, they can try to match MCAT scores. If they're successful, eureka! They have a list of what schools you've applied to. But mdapps is such a miniscule percentage of med school applicants and since they have so many apps, I really don't see them going to the trouble.

Well, I don't know how often it happens. But if (for example) I went out of my way to badmouth school X, while bragging about what a shoe-in I was to the school, a curious person could easily hop on the link to my md profile. The average prestigious schools have no more than 5,000 or so applicants. On a computerized system, it would take only seconds to find all the male applicants from undergrad school Y who scored a 12, 11, 10 P on the MCAT. From then on, it would only take a lackey student employee to keep track of what other colorful things I said about school X, or about how I planned to exaggerate my ten seconds of shadowing into three years worth since I did it sporadically throughout college etc etc. Point is, it's unlikely, but there's enough of a chance - particularly when folks link their apps right in their sigs - that I would think twice before sigging to MDapps...particularly if I've ever said anything of dubious nature concerning myself, my application, or the schools I'm applying to. You think it's a crapshoot now...just wait until the day you write on SDN about how you weren't really volunteering post-Katrina, and get your thin letter in the mail (express!) from Tulane the following business day. :laugh:

As others have intimated, I don't think it's nearly as much of a big deal to have your profile squarely on md, since the only people likely to take the trouble to ID you are fellow applicants from your school. However, it becomes a different ballgame when your profile is linked directly to a frequently-posting being on SDN. The chances are low for it affecting your app negatively...but why make it easier for snoopers? This is one of those cases where I'd play it safer.
 
Surprise! It’s not a good idea to post things about yourself on the internet that you don’t want other people to know. No kidding.

Kudos to those who pointed out Google’s cache. That is a GREAT way to snag stuff that people post and then remove. This works quite well with myspace profiles that used to be public, then were switched to private. There are other similar things out there.

As to the notion of adcoms stalking you out on the internet, always better to be safe than sorry. If you are going to be nasty, no problem, but be darn sure that it’s anonymous. Which means behave ANYWHERE that links back to who you really are (like facebook).

Do I think that a committee member wastes time on it? Probably not. But as another poster pointed out, I wouldn’t put it past a student. And if it rubs them the wrong way, it’s a good bet that they will be sharing.

This post is strange for me because I am usually the one making fun of others for being paranoid. In this case, it is warranted.
 
Paranoid premeds hard at work!

Just don't say anything brash and you'll be fine. ADCOMS don't have time to look over profiles and if they do, they won't find anything new -with regards to my application process. They'll know how many schools I've applied to. What I want to know is do admissions committees know what other schools you've been accepted to?

P.S. What would premed machine have to say about this?
 
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